Now that I’ve graduated and am searching for a job, part of staying busy involves catching up on projects that had fallen by the wayside or been shoved into a drawer. I’m good at starting things, let’s say. I should never have to leave the house, I’ve got so much to finish.

A couple of years ago, I was fascinated by a chevron baby blanket pattern featured on PurlBee—the colors drifted into each other in a really neat, modern way and I ordered up 7 hanks of Blue Sky Alpacas Cotton: Lemongrass, Lemonade, Bone, Tulip, Drift, Sleet, and Graphite. Actually working with the pattern just didn’t do anything for me, though, and it all sat in a bag until about three days ago, when I brought it out again and went looking for a more pointy chevron effect, as the PurlBee version just kind of dipped here and there.

Previous attempt: muddled. Every removable stitch marker I own is on there. Blankets shouldn’t require the planning and restructuring levels of a unilateral trade agreement.

Lo and behold, Espace Tricot’s Chevron Baby Blanket. Lovely! Pointy! Done deal. I’m using 10.5 needles, and CO 129—that puts 4 garter stitches at the beginning and end of each row, and I did 4 rows of garter stitches, all to prevent rolling.

For some reason, the start was cursed. It took me five or six (rage) froggings before the pattern seemed to stick in my brain, and I have been forcing myself to count the stitches in each RS wave section to guard against disaster, but last night I moved on to the second color in the bag, and after so many do-overs, it felt notable. Victory.

To calculate how much yarn I was going to need to complete a full set (both a RS and a WS), I pulled my working yarn through a yardage counter, and then measured again when I got toward the end. Here’s my counter and the scrap I was left with.

2014 was my year of crafting; I hadn’t worked on cross-stitching in a long time and was completely taken by Jodi Rice’s designs on Etsy. She’s a fan of Mary Blair and takes clear inspiration from the Small World ride at Disneyland. The patterns are hard to resist for their distinct color palettes, but I think what makes them so fun to work on is their modularity. They’re structured by sections or pieces, so you can work on this building or that bit of flower and feel like you’ve made good progress.

I love them all, but I’m especially a fan of the tiny backstitching on the Statue of Liberty’s crown.

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It makes me happy that they’re choosing to annotate any of the episodes in the first place, but this is a particularly good one, if only for all the Hank Williams, Jr. history that the annotators had to go back and research. Imagine having that job.

Stop this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems;
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun—(there are millions of suns left;)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books:
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me:
You shall listen to all sides, and filter them for yourself.